Demand For More Information Highlights Conflict Between Attention vs Distraction

The reality is that consumers will always want more and providers will be always be delighted to give it to them - at a price. Distraction trumps attention. JL

Stephen Williams reports in the New York Times:

“If a head-up display can warn of a collision or a grade crossing ahead and a train coming, that may actually help. But if it puts up an iPod playlist or sends a restaurant reservation, that may distract from the task of driving.”

When Manish Undavia took delivery of the 2016 Audi A7 sedan — list price, about $71,000 — it came with technology rarely found in automobiles, even five years ago: collision avoidance systems, sensors to keep the car from drifting and, perhaps most baffling to Mr. Undavia, a head-up display.

“A what?” he asked the salesman.

Richard Cardenas, a salesman at Biener Audi on Long Island, turned on the car and showed Mr. Undavia how it worked. From the driver’s seat, the car’s speed — “0 mph” — appeared about six feet beyond the dashboard, floating in space, visible only to Mr. Undavia.

It’s the latest application of a technology that has been long established in other industries. Airplane pilots, for example, use it to land. Video gamers swear by it to target aliens.

Now, the head-up display, once mostly confined to performance cars like the Chevrolet Corvette, is migrating more broadly to the automobile world, mainly in premium-priced vehicles, and finding a consumer audience that is only vaguely aware that such a feature exists.

To automakers, the technology makes for safer driving because the driver does not need to look down for information. The illuminated graphics, which may be white or colored, are transparent, so that the driver actually looks through them onto the road ahead.

But to skeptics, head-up displays are yet another informational distraction for the already data-overloaded driver. No federal standards govern the use of head-up displays, and that concerns some safety advocates.

“It’s like the Wild West out there in terms of what’s being put into cars, and we’re expressing caution because there are no standards,” said Deborah Hersman, president of the independent National Safety Council near Chicago and a former chairwoman of the National Transportation Safety Board.

“If a head-up display can warn of a collision or a grade crossing ahead and a train coming, that may actually help,” she said. “But if it puts up an iPod playlist or sends a restaurant reservation, that may distract from the task of driving.”

Advertisement

Continue reading the main story

While the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration routinely issues voluntary guidelines to automakers over driver distraction, there is no federal regulation governing head-up displays. The agency said it had begun to research the issue and expected to issue guidelines.

At the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a spokesman, Russ Rader, acknowledged that the systems could offer useful information, but said that they had the potential to be a distraction as well.

“We just don’t know to what extent it could be a distraction,” he said, adding that the group had yet to study the systems. “But if they proliferate widely, the organization could analyze whether they make a difference in crash risk.”

Despite the legal limbo, the displays are already available in many cars, including those made by Lexus, BMW, Cadillac, Mercedes and Audi, among others. The equipment lives under the dashboard, and the feature arrives either as an option, costing $500 to $1,000, or comes bundled as standard equipment.

The technology can be disabled by the driver, usually with a button on the steering wheel or the center console.

Manufacturers say they are comfortable with the systems and that customer feedback has been positive, if limited.

“Driver distraction is a huge concern for us, and we really believe that H.U.D. is a great way to keep people looking in the right direction,” said Gary Robinson, manager of product planning for Honda’s Acura division. He said Honda was planning to add the displays to a broader range of models in the future.

Audi, part of the Volkswagen Group, plans to offer the displays in its coming A4 sedan and A5 coupe and the new Q7 S.U.V.

“From our perspective, the whole reason for head-up displays is to help with driver distraction,” said Barry Hoch, general manager of product planning for Audi of America. “You reduce the tilting of the head by 20 degrees, which is what’s required to look at an instrument cluster. And you don’t need to refocus back onto the road.”

Extensive research into the displays and their effects in the real world is being conducted by the Germany-based Continental AG, which manufacturers tires and automotive electronics. The company, which supplies head-up display components for automakers including BMW, Renault and Mercedes, said it was already developing the next generation of display systems.

Those systems, called “augmented reality” displays, add a layer of information, making the displays more dynamic. For example, the display sees a vehicle ahead and places a halo light beneath it, which changes colors as the car comes closer to it. These new systems are expected to arrive in some models in 2017, a Continental spokeswoman said.

Suppliers like Continental are well aware of the risk of information overload. Guido Meier-Arendt, principal technical expert for Continental, added: “It’s like the salt in the soup. It’s a must-have, but you have to be careful how much you use.”

Even as automakers begin to include the systems, they are not actively marketing head-up displays as a safety feature. But Bart Herring, general manager of product management for Mercedes-Benz USA, said that advances like the augmented reality display could have significant safety merits.

“For our lane departure warning system, you now get a vibration in the steering wheel and a message in the instrument cluster,” he said. With the new systems, he said, “that message is actually laid out onto the road as red arrows, giving you guidance to move over.”

Some drivers see the head-up display as the answer to a question that no one’s asking. According to a J.D. Power study released in August, 33 percent of more than 4,000 new-car owners recently surveyed said they “never use” the displays in their vehicles. Respondents said that they didn’t find the technology useful and that the feature “came as part of a package on my current vehicle and I did not want it.”

At Biener Audi, Mr. Cardenas said that customers rarely inquired about head-up display availability, “although some are familiar with it.” Is the lack of a display ever a deal-breaker? “Uh, no,” he said, smiling. “If it would be, then those people aren’t buying cars anyway.”

Jennifer Wahnschaff, a Continental vice president, however, is confident that consumers will embrace the idea over time “as more manufacturers bring it to market, in all ranges of vehicles.”

“Drivers will expect they’ll be able to get the information they need, without looking down,” she said.

Mr. Undavia, a cardiologist who lives in Manhattan, has been using the system in his commutes between home and work on Long Island.

“I’ve been using the display daily, for the speedometer and navigation, and it doesn’t come across as an interference; it’s fairly unobtrusive,” he said.

“It’s a nice little perk. But I still look down at the odometer."